1984-1989

THE NEXT KARATE KID just wasn't a good movie; it was made in a different era, with a different audience...; it's weird what a difference 5 years can make (TNKK came out in 1994), but really, the atmosphere of 1994 was a totally different one than that of 1989 (the release year of THE KARATE KID III). I actually haven't seen KK3, but I remember going to the theater to see GHOSTBUSTERS II, which I didn't know what was what we were going there to see (my parents wanted it to be a surprise...) and so, unaware of there being anything to really look forward to other than an advertisement for GBII, I was disappointed that they had taken this really neat looking stand-in that had the poster art w/ the 4 guys WITH an image of Slimer, moving from behind the stand-in to out from the stand-in...I guess that doesn't SOUND exciting, but it was a lot neater than just a regular poster; I always thought those cardboard stand-ins were cool. I've looked on e-bay for it several times and no success...

But back to the karate kid; when I got to the theater to see GBII, I saw an ad for The Karate Kid III, which I think I had somehow been aware of, and I was pretty much like "they replaced an ad for GB2 with an ad for Karate Kid III??? Why???". It looked like a ripoff to begin with, I mean, how many things can you do with a story about a new kid in school who learns karate? I don't even know if all of this was going on in my head at THAT time, but it seems like it was...

But just the artwork for the ad was in itself appealing; it had a red sun blaring over the main characters. Now that a mini-lifetime of cover-art for VHS tapes have been replaced with an era of heartless DVD cover-artwork (to go along with the movies that Hollywood keeps pumping out I guess...), that memory rings sweetly in my mind, probably b/c it goes along with a bigger memory, which I guess you could say was part of an even bigger memory, the "collective unsocncious" of the 1980's, perhaps? I mean, I'm probably the only one who remembers the ad so fondly, but how many people living outside of a rock in the 1980s could not know THE KARATE KID and GHOSTBUSTERS? Oh, and did I mention this memeory took place just a month or two after we went to see INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (at my father's insistance)? That's another pivotal 80's movie, or at least a sequel to a pivotol 80's film...

Well, they've had THE KARATE KID I II & III available in two different ways for awhile now; either individually ($30? Yeesh!) or in a box set including that half-hearted 1994 sequel. But just yesterday I saw THE KARATE KID TRILOGY at Target for a highly attractive price (under $15 w/ tax). I hope I can go grab it before I run out of $...I get my monthly check tomorrow...although most of the personal spending portion of it has already been spent on a DVD/(SA)CD player that arrived a couple days ago - seemingly defective, unless it's just not compatable with my TV or something...they're supposed to receive it back on the 3rd (Wednesday), not sure if they'll send another out right away or if they'll need to take a couple days or more inspecting what I sent back...but when/if it comes back in good order, that'll be well worth what I paid for it, I think. Just about everybody has nothing but priase for the unit, except for this one lady who apparantly rec'd a lemon and couldn't get Denon's warranty dept to treat her nice enough...

July

Looks like June will be the last month of living here in my apartment. I'm moving in with my mother, 'cause my sister is moving to Georgia to get married to her fiance and my sister doesn't want to have to sell the house since A) the economy isn't good enough to make even a "standard" amount back on it and B) it hasn't gained hardly any equity since she didn't buy it that long ago.
I hope that Denon DVD/Sacd/etc(?) player I'm expecting to receive today (via UPS) has a headphone jack. I'm not counting on it, but I tried using headphones via the receiver I have and the receiver acted as if the headphones weren't there...maybe I should have unplugged my speakers first? Idk...I'll see what the Denon player is like, and go from there...right now I don't have a player hooked up to my receiver, 'cause I have no use for two DVD/CD... players and I can listen to music on my computer until the UPS guy gets here.

new direction

Hmm; I guess the production is a bit weak, but the melodies found on The Starting Line's Virgin Records' label debut DIRECTION are not anywhere near as bad as I made it out to be when shortly after first hearing it the day it came out (maybe it was the day after, I don't think I was able to get a ride THE VERY DAY it came out...).

It's actually a very good CD. As for repeated listening capability, it's better than Cartel's 2005 Militia Records album CHROMA, although for pure pleasure CHROMA is still top dog...I/you/we(?) just have to keep from overdoing it...but when there's so few CDs that are THAT GOOD, it's hard...

The CD actually gets better as it goes on, which is almost a comical statement, 'cause I heard SILYMI (2002) for the first time and LOVED it; I didn't get an opportunity to hear it again until years later (I was listening to it for free @ Hot Topic) and when I heard it again (on Rhapsody) I couldn't help but feel all the songs kinda ran together and it got insanely boring. See, that's what it FEELS like WHEN YOU ARE NOT REALLY listening to it. You can't listen to a punk-pop record as background music and expect it to have the effect of a Pink Floyd record. But then again, PF is atsmophere music, punk-pop is emotion music; so you won't get Pink Floyd chills (or whatever...) regardless of what you do, unless you just stay away from punk-pop...

of course, like all these punk-pop CDS of the last 5 years (with the exception of recent releases), it's super-cheap, even cheaper than it was when it first came out, with BestBuy selling it for $9.99 and my local Hastings Entertainment (and most likely other Hastings locations as well...they really are a chain, just not a big monster chain like WalMart...) for $8.99 (I felt like a total jacka** after finding it for a WHOLE DOLLAR cheaper and getting all excited about BestBuy's price; ESPECIALLY since I DID NOT enjoy it!!!).

so LITTLE to do, really...

BTW, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on that "so much to do..." list actually got accomplished. A bit ironic,...dontchya think?

What exactly makes The real Ghostbusters so great?

Well, aside from the fact that the GB logo, a genius work of art in and of itself, is featured all over it...

As (some of) you may know, the 1986-1991 hit animated television show, THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS was released on DVD earlier this year. I was sorta excited, just 'cause I had been losing hope of anything GB being tapped into...of course, following the news of the RGB being released to DVD, along comes the news that REALLY tickles me pink: ACTION FIGURES!!! - and possibly a 3rd movie, re-shaped with a new creative team, with assistance from the original brains of course...
except I don't even know if a third movie really will be that great. I'll prolly buy tickets to it if it doesn't look totally stupid like THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (1995) or THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN (2005) or MR DEEDS (2000). I swear, does the term "comedy" ALWAYS, or SO SELDOMLY, have to be devoid of any intellect? LIAR LIAR (1997) and RUTHLESS PEOPLE (1986) were comedic genuis. Why can't smart people, or at least ppl who aren't complete idiots, go to the theater and enjoy a well made film?
Anyway; I got rid of GBII, and I'm not missing it too terribly. Some of the images stay with me; I don't know why...seeing the move in its 108 minute entirety is usually rather pointless though.
The first movie, GHOSTBUSTERS, is pretty good, but if it weren't for the Stay Puft scene, an indescribably thrilling moment in cinema history, the film would equal much less.
I finally bought RGB volume one (not the whole series, I don't HAVE that kind of money) and am selling it as soon as I can. I mean, really, there's nothing that great about the show. I don't like the style of animation, I don't generally like animated stuff as it is, and the stories are fairly generic, repetitive, and the visuals are so-so...
I guess I'm no longer a "die-hard" Ghostbusters fan...who woulda thunk?

memories vs. feelings

Someday my memories will slip away
All the things I could recollect when I see her face
Will no longer reside in me
Someday I will wither and decay
All the things I once loved will do the same
Will I ever be the same?

can you comprehend this?

Oh, crud; can't find the part of Richard Walter's book I keep thinking of; of course, even if I could/did, the post would prolly be deleted for violation of copyright laws...

Anyway; it basically said, something to the effect of,: successful movies aren't just a bunch of random pieces of events, and even when you tie them together with a theme or series of, the audience should be able to find a sense of purpose in watching x movie. They should not walk out of the theater feeling as they've wasted their time on "mere entertainment".

Well, perhaps my definition(s) of meaning are a bit extreme; I just got done watching BOY A and found it pointless. Maybe I'm just too out of it, I think A CLOCKWORK ORANGE was brilliant and beyond so many times. It took a handful of concepts and painted a picture with them. PERFECT. the only film I can think of that came close to that level of art is ERASERHEAD. STAR WARS episodes IV, V and VI, along with GHOSTBUSTERS I & II & Gregg Araki's nowhere don't have the same sense of "meaning", but they do one heck of a job at painting pictures with the camera.

I think music should have the same goal. The music industry is hungry for anybody with any melodic sense, b/c they know they can snipe a pretty penny out of the demographic that has no melodic sense and no understanding of it. That and people who have no taste.
My online penpal, Chris, listens to a lot of music. He tends to like loud abrasive music. I don't know why. And one feller I was having a similar discussion with on one of Amazon's forums suggested that entire genres should NOT be eliminated for their lack of purpose. What purpose? Atmosphere over melody. Maybe I'm just too thick-hearted (ya know, like a person's head can be "thick"?); I Just don't think music that treats melody second should be distributed. I mean, if people don't want to indulge in their feelings, then they might as well be dead and buried (or cremated, whatever...). I mean, everybody HAS feelings; they don't go away just b/c you disregard them. They manifest in different ways, sometimes unbeknownst to the individual(s) experiencing such things, sometimes in very dangerous ways. So what better way to confront them than get them opened up with music?
Music/movies/art are being abused like everything else in this consumerist "gimme gimme" society. You want sex? TAKE IT; you want beer?; TAKE IT, take all you want, you want food? TAKE IT; you want a thinner body? GO AHEAD: TAKE IT!!! You want your cake AND eat it? BUY ANOTHER CAKE!!!! then buy another liposuction treatment. OH, and don't worry about that fetus that appeared out of nowhere "only" b/c "real men don't wear condoms"; your parents can take care of it. After all, they work hard to support your lazy juvinile delinquient A**.

My friend Chris once said: "that's the great thing about music. there's always more!". So...does that mean there's really no such thing as mediocre/crappy music? I seriously would like to know WHY anyone, with the limited amount of time the avg person has to live on this overall cruddy planet, that a person WOULD HAVE ANY DESIRE to settle for lesser quality ANY thing. But then again I seriously would like to know why people act like a car does NOT have the ability to smash into your head with the speed and precision of a bullet...the way people drive, zooming through parking lots, loaded with booze, not paying attention...

oh the horror!

I had a dream this evening (was asleep for 2 or 3 hours...) that was so disturbing;

For some reason, there were 2 additional cats in my apartment, one for each cat that I normally have...well, I was afraid they would get in a fight with my cats, and I kept trying to get them out of my apartment, but for some reason wasn't succeeding...so, while all 4 cats were in my closet, doing a surprisingly good++ job of minding their own business, I knocked down a couple or so boxes, which squashed the two stranger-cats.

The sad thing was how the 2nd cat, who was a lot smaller than the other one, didn't seem at all aware of the doom at hand, and he just kind of almost was walking towards it...I don't remember the details all that well...they were neat cats, but they weren't supposed to be here...

THE TREE'S GHOST

You kick and step and stand and walk on the table that you think you own
You know you own it
You know it has no feelings or any means to think
You know it's yours, to do whatever with
But you don't know there's no such thing as ghosts
You don't think about the ghost of where your table came from
trees are living things, they breath like you and I, they defend themselves, in their own way
like we do
But if you thought about it, you'd feel it necessary to take away from yourself
To give more to the tree(s)
And not receive from said tree(s)
You wouldn't be as comfortable without something to rest your rear end on
Your things wouldn't look as nice without something to put them on
Never you mind the possibility of your table feeling pain
Of your chair, your entertainment center
Never you would
Because you are the King
You are different, you are you, you have the knife, the tree does not
take from the land, never you mind giving thanx or slowing down
your use of trees and other living things
their ghosts don't haunt you, neither will your conscience
Sleep easy on your bed, is it also partly made of trees?
Never you mind, the speed in which you kill
Without pity, without remorse
You own the land
You have the knife, the tree does not

buying rare items on amazon for dummies and novices...or people who don't know how and probably have no reason to but are intrigued regardless (??)...

see, on Amazon's item page(s), there's (usually) a picture of what they are/were selling and

there's usually multiple versions/editions of the same album, some have bonus tracks, some have different bonus tracks, some have different cover art, some are made from better quality material etc....

but usually there's a "main" edition, kind of like a standard, at least for any given country that one lives in, in this case the U.S. edition...or the most popular import if it's not avail in the U.S....

this album called "Octopus" by a crazy band called Gentle Giant, as with a lot of 70's prog rock CDs, has different cover art in the U.S. than it does in Europe, and the European version is generally considered better (I being part of that general mentality...or whatever noun u wish to insert there...)

But this one seller, as usual, decided to post a West German (I say "west" German b/c it was printed in 1989 - b4 the Berlin wall fell) import as "collectable" under the standard U.S. Amazon listing (on Amazon there's three gradings you can give for CDs: New, Used, and Collectable; each of those four grades has four sub-grades you can choose from: Acceptable, Good, Very Good or Like New). BTW, 80's West German pressings of compact discs don't have QUITE the audiophile appeal of 80's Japan pressings of compact discs, but they're still rather collectable, since they generally sound better than US pressings, which are made w/ the cheapest materials available in most cases...

So yeah; I found a W.G. import under the standard edition, this is just like an hour ago; LAST NIGHT, I found the VERY SAME CD, under one of the less visited item pages, and that item page was also not for the exact version he/they were/are selling, but the page for the item indicated that the item being sold would/should be from 1994 (don't know anything beyond that, since Amazon's kinda bad about giving item details on their item pages...), whereas, as I stated above, the item that was actually being sold was from 1989...technically, this would be against amazon's guidelines, but as a buyer of this kind of merchandise, I am willing to just accept that it's darn near impossible for amazon's database to recognize EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY pressing of any given album...you can create a new item page at Amazon, if you pay $40 a month for some kind of seller plan, which anyone can buy, but it doesn't make a whole lotta sense for people like myself that don't sell on Amazon for the sake of making ends meet, with the exception of very small ends, if I'm using the word "ends" correctly...anyway...
If I had had money on my debit card last night, I probably woulda scrammed up and bought the version I saw last night. Thank Goodness I didn't, b/c the version available under the standard US edition is half the price almost (about $14 vs. $23 w/ S&H).

and I tell you, I don't even have a high end/audiophile system. all I have is a very basic 3 1/2 star avg rated-on-Amazon receiver, which I FINALLY bought after over a year of thinking about it, and some $50 speakers. and I'm not THAT picky about cover art, although I do think it is worth noting, and I do try to avoid paying just as much or almost for a CD w/ croppy cover art as I would for a CD that has pristine cover art...
The main thing is, a) the USA version DOES have dumb looking cover art, yes indeed. And there's versions available, still in print, that have faithfully reproduced the European cover art. However, A) these CDs, or most of them, come in "mini-LP" format, which is insane, since you have to do the same thing to those as you do with vinyl records. You have to roll them out of the cover, and THEN take them out of their inner sleeve. If that's not enough, you have to put up with the very sad fact that, at least as of a year or two ago, when I first started learning about Gentle Giant (they may have fixed this since then, I really don't know...), the mini-LP versions had/have been defectively manufactured. I'd read multiple complaints regarding that and I absolutely refuse to buy any item that has a UPC associated with a defect.
Although, in all honesty, I really don't know if I would have paid $23 for a CD just b/c it had better cover art. But it looked like it was either that or bend over for the Corporate Dumbheads who make these stupid chocies...thankfully, I know now that that is not the case...$13 vs. $6 (the minimum cost of the standard USA version)? Yeah, sure, it's "double", you make that sound like it's an outrageous comparison, but both dollar amounts have this in common: they're not what I would call a "large" sum of $. Heck, a lot of people wouldn't consider $20 a large sum of $, but those are the same people that say money can't buy happiness like they don't realize how much of it they go through in an hour...I don't go through hardly ANY $ within an hour, except for a select few out of each month, because I don't HAVE hardly any $ to go through...it's called being poor. I try not to complain though, 'cause if I set my mind to it (which is hard for me to do, those of you that don't know me too well will say "well, we're all the same on the inside, so if I can do it, so you can YOU!", but, we're not all the same on the inside; that's why it's called a "mental disorder"...it's an inner difference between a "normal" person's brain and that of someone who has a "mental disorder". Just like some people have two legs, some have 1 and some have none...

It is kind of exhausting, but...that's life...I honestly can't imagine though what fans of The Beatles must feel like, those who lived through the British Invasion and weren't living IN Englad at the time...there's probably 10 versions at least of each The Beatles album, yet only one of them has been made onto CD to the general population...and it goes a lot farther than cover - art...track selection, track sequence, track mixes.........thank Gosh I didn't face being a teenager/20-something back then in the USA...of course, there's multiple other reasons I'm glad I wasn't alive then...for one, if you were against the Vietnam war and didn't try to hide it, the police would kick your A** and the mayor of New York (and other cities, I gather) would say that's what you get when you let your heart win...I was reading somewhere how Ronald Reagen was one of those War-happy politicians who never gave a 2nd thought about the protesters and what they wanted. It makes my blood boil when I think of that combined with his landslide Presidential election less than 10 years later...and I swear it ought to be TREASON to promise something as monumental to the American People as that of ending a devasting war that has UNECESSARILY cost'd lives AND LOTS of tax dollars, and, to a lesser extent, resources and the environment etc.;...I'm talking about Richard Nixon BTW; he promises that and goes on TV a few years later and says "I lied; I actually think you're all fools for wanting such a thing, but that's what I needed to do to win." Yeah, like it's a darn football game. Of course, Jane Fonda and her ilk are no different; so many traitors to this country, none of them ever face charges...yet a soldier disobeys a direct order and they get locked up for 10 years...even if the direct order is to kill an innocent life or some thing that doesn't even make any difference either way...

so much to do...

REVISION to "math is the path"....

$026.00 GBII (import) DVD (Amazon Mktplce)
$044.00 2 surge protectors (Amazon.com)
$015.00 CD-R 50pk (Amazon Mktplce seller)
$071.00 Trespass & Nursery Cryme (SACD Hybrid/DVD packs) + In The Region of the summer Stars (ImportCDs.com via Amazon)
$066.00 Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (SACD Hybrid/DVD/mini-LP) (CDJapan)
$025.00 Kid A (10" vinyl) (Hot Topic)
---------
$247.00 out of $250 = $3 for eating out/??

math is the path!

yeah...right...

(prices reflect the present, not the past or future...subject to change as I don't have control over that...)

$000.00 THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY (SACD Hybrid/DVD/mini-LP)
$000.00 GHOSTBUSTERS II (Japanese DVD)
$000.00 IN THE REGION OF THE SUMMER STARS (mini-LP)
$000.00 TRESPASS (SACD Hybrid/DVD/mini-LP)
$212.00 NURSERY CRYME (SACD Hybrid/DVD/mini-LP)
$024.00 KID A (10" vinyl)
---------
$236.00 = $14 left from stimulus check for eating out and/or whatever...

the first 5 in this list are to be shipped together from CDJapan, the 5th in the list is to be bought at Hot Topic if they still have it when I get the stimulus check...